story, and declared that
Sinon was a spy; but he was cut short in his remonstrance by two huge
serpents, which glided out of the sea and devoured him and his two sons.
Cassandra, too, a daughter of Priam, who had the gift of prophecy, but
was fated never to be believed, shrieked with despair when she saw the
Trojans harnessing themselves to the horse to drag it into Troy, but
nobody heeded her, and there was a great feast to dedicate it to Pallas.
Helen perhaps guessed or knew what it meant, for at dark she walked round
it, and called the names of Ulysses, and many other Greeks, in the voices
of Penelope and the other wives at home.

[Picture: Laocoon] For indeed the horse was full of Greeks; and at dark
Sinon lighted a beacon as a signal to the rest, who were only waiting
behind the little isle of Tenedos. Then he let the others out of the
horse, and slaughter and fire reigned throughout Troy. Menelaus slew
Deiphobus as he tried to rise from bed, and carried Helen down to his
ship. Poor old Priam tried to put on his armour and defend Hecuba and
his daughters, but Pyrrhus killed him at the altar in his palace-court;
and AEneas, after seeing this, and that all was lost, hurried back to his
own house, took his father Anchises on his back, and his little son Iulus
in one hand, his household gods in the other, and, with his wife Creusa
following, tried to escape from the burning city with his own troop of
warriors. All succeeded except poor Creusa, who was lost in the throng
of terrified fugitives, and was never found again; but AEneas found ships
on the coast, and sailed safely away to Italy.

All the rest of the Trojans were killed or made slaves. Ulysses killed
Hector's poor little son, and Andromache became slave to young Pyrrhus.
Cassandra clung to Pallas' statue, and Ajax Oileus, trying to drag her
away, moved the statue itself--such an act of sacrilege that the Greeks
had nearly stoned him on the spot--and Cassandra was given to Agamemnon.
Polyxena, the youngest sister, was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles,
and poor old Hecuba went mad with grief.

[Picture: Funeral Feast]

CHAP. X.--THE WANDERINGS OF ULYSSES.

[Picture: Decorative chapter heading]

The overthrow of the temples at Troy was heavily visited on the Greeks by
the gods, and the disasters that befel Ulysses are the subject of another
grand Greek poem called the _Odyssey_, from his right Greek